VAUX - Plague Music ( 21/09/2004 Equal Vision) - EP Review

VAUX

VAUX - Plague Music ( 21/09/2004 Equal Vision) - EP Review

VAUX Plague Music ( 21/09/2004 Equal Vision)

Having thrilled Thrice fans Europe wide with their in your face honest punk on tour last winter; the rambunctious Denver sextet Vaux quench the first for focused punk with this terse five track EP. Opener ‘Celibate Good Times’ mixes emotion and irreverence better than Oscar Wilde and The Streets put together (that would have been interesting, eh?). Lead singer Quentin Smith's earnest and stern vocal

style gives the track and the EP a neat lift. Whilst 80% of this offering is prominent post punk mayhem, variety is proffered in the blunt titled: “Sex Will Happen Tonight”, featuring a snake charming type instrumental before Smith’s eerie and haunting, slowed down vocals are introduced giving this number a PJ Harvey feel.

Cutting guitars and shattering percussion help to produce passionate and heartfelt punk. These are traits that have been torn apart from the aforementioned genre like a lonely spring lamb separated from its mum and alas its roots; rendering it purposeless. This EP will wet appetites all around the world for their full length album due out in January 2005. If this EP and last years explosive ‘There Must be Someway to Stop Them’, is anything to go by, then the new year could commence with a whirlwind of refreshing honesty and commitment and of course; cutting music.